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McLuhan makes the important claim that all media contain other media. While I do not agree with every detail of his theories, it seems clear that this is true – that an animated film contains painting, that a hip-hop song contains speech, that TV can show a play. With this in mind I decided to create a graph showing these containments, focusing on the media that might be contained within film and how they contain each other.

To illustrate these containments I used two programs available on the Internet, both of which are media in their own right: AOL Instant Messenger, and BuddyZoo, to create what I call a MediaZoo. In Instant Messenger, users form a list of their buddies, with whom they can communicate. In this case, I treated the media as the users, signing them up for their own Instant Messenger accounts (I added numbers to the ends of their names since their names were taken – the numbers are irrelevant). I constructed buddy lists for them based on the principle that a medium contains on its buddy list the name of any medium that it can contain as a medium. Thus, since film can contain speech, speech is on film’s buddy list. But speech cannot contain film, so film is not on speech’s buddy list. These lists are attached, with examples to justify the inclusions.

BuddyZoo takes users’ buddy lists and uses them to construct a graph. If a medium is on film’s buddy list, an arrow points from film to that medium, and similarly for all other media. The graph puts film at the center, although it turns out that television and film can both contain all of the other examples that I used, including each other. This is a more set-theoretic approach to contrast with the geometrical approach of the hyper cube. Imagine these containments as Venn diagrams with a shared space in the middle. Of course, this taxonomy is far from exhaustive - a film can contain a myriad of media. It is also far from definitive – any of these inclusions or exclusions can be contested, and might change over time.

This taxonomy is useful in two ways. First, it reminds us that taxonomy itself is a kind of medium, by its unusual structure and form and the use of relatively new technology that we have not “gotten used to” yet. Second, it shows us the ways that media can relate to one another (in this way I also find its structure aesthetically pleasing). I think that the use of Instant Messenger is therefore especially appropriate, since the media seem literally to be communicating with one another. Film inherits qualities from all of the media that it contains. In fact, since it can contain so many, it can take on any number of qualities. Perhaps this is why it is such a powerful and pervasive medium. On the other hand, speech contains none of the other media listed here, and it is still quite pervasive, perhaps because it is close to our bodies technologically (that would be the subject of another taxonomy).

Media and Their Buddies

Here are the "buddy lists" for all of the media. Each medium has on its list all of the other media that it can contain. Thus, since film contains all of the media in question here, there are all on its list. The parenthesis are examples where I think they are necessary or useful – some of these inclusions are obvious and do not require comment. As I mentioned before, the numbers are irrelevant, although they lend a certain authenticity to our play with Instant Messenger.

Film902
Telvision836 (Any time characters in a film watch TV, for example Waking Life)
Radio529 (Any movie in which the character go on a road trip features radio)
Print894 (The credits, title cards in silent films)
Music2521 (Soundtracks, movie musicals)
Painting893 (Animated films, films about painting)
Photography578 (The film is composed of a sequence of photographic stills)
Speech932
SoundEffects257
Theater375 (Plays made into films)
Animatronics486 (Jurassic Park)